The present invention relates generally to a method for planning and designing object-oriented systems, and more specifically, to a method for planning and designing IT (Information Technology) strategies and architecture plans based on which an Information Technology infrastructure can be built.
The present application is related to Ser. No. 08/814,179 filed Mar. 10, 1997, now abandoned; Ser. No. 08/812,889 filed Mar. 10, 1997, now abandoned; Ser. No. 08/814,493 filed Mar. 10, 1997, now abandoned; Ser. No. 08/814,180 filed Mar. 10, 1997, now abandoned; Ser. No. 08/815,408 filed Mar. 10, 1997, now abandoned; Ser. No. 08/914,747 filed Aug. 19, 1997, pending; Ser. No. 08/914,415 filed Aug. 19, 1997, pending; Ser. No. 08/914,559 filed Aug. 19, 1997, pending; Ser. No. 08/914,562 filed Aug. 19, 1997, pending; Ser. No. 08/914,542 filed Aug. 19, 1997, pending; and Ser. No. 08/814,181 filed Mar. 10, 1997; pending, which are incorporated into the present application by reference.
With the development of the modern technologies prevalent in today's IT infrastructures--such as client/server systems, data warehouses, massively parallel systems and highly distributed networking, it is well acknowledged that Information Technology (IT) can help an enterprise manage its operational business environments, delight customers, predict customers' future needs, increase market shares, and enhance profits. Information Technology can also enable an enterprise to better use its resources and improve coordination among different organizations within the enterprise, thus improving its efficiency and competitiveness.
Information Technology (IT) infrastructures are the platform on which IT-enabled business systems can be implemented. However, designing and building a high quality IT infrastructure solution for an enterprise is a complex task, because it involves business knowledge about the industry in which the enterprise operates, the organizational and operational knowledge of that enterprise, and the technology knowledge to build the IT infrastructure. An infrastructure solution design may involve an evolving decision process from various parties, including executive officers, managers, IT system users, designers, and builders.
To cope with the complexity of an IT infrastructure solution, an IT architecture plays a role to break down a complex task into smaller and simpler components, and allows the various parties to view the IT infrastructure solution with different perspectives and objectives. Based on a business-aligned IT architecture, an IT architecture consultant can develop IT strategy and plan deliverables for an enterprise. Based on the IT strategy architecture planning deliverables for the enterprise, the various parties, including executive officers, managers, users, designers, and builders, can analyze the investment, risk, feasibility, effort, etc. An IT architecture visual model (which is created by a graphical-based or symbol-based tool) is very effective to present an IT architecture deliverable.
Usually, the elements in an IT architecture can be classified into several categories, such as business, operational (or procedural), technical, etc. Many times the rationale or justification of making a decision to build the elements in one category are based on the elements in another category. For example, the rationale or justification for making the decision to build the elements in a technical category is based on the elements in business category. Thus, within an IT architecture, it is crucial to define the relationships among the elements in the two concerning categories and arrange them in a fashion that is suitable for making such decisions. In addition, as business and IT undergo rapid and sometimes extreme changes, it is a necessity to make such a decision in a fast paced and dynamic fashion.
Therefore, there has been a need to provide a method for arranging the elements in an IT architecture in a fashion that is suitable for making decisions based upon a potentially large number of diverse rationale and to view these decisions and rationale in an easy to use visual model.
There has been another need to provide a method for providing a visual model that allows immediate visual interpretation of relationships between, information about, and knowledge of, the elements in the different categories thereby allowing better understanding for the IT architecture visual model user as to the nature of these relationships.
The present invention provides such a method to meet these needs.